


Adrift

by probablylostrightnow



Category: Craft Sequence - Max Gladstone
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 10:23:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13052088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/probablylostrightnow/pseuds/probablylostrightnow
Summary: Cat and Raz are traveling together to Kavekana on the Kel's Bounty. But the sea holds mysteries old and new, and one may keep them from ever reaching their destination...





	Adrift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Senji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senji/gifts).



Cat stood at the _Bounty_ ’s rail, watching the moonlight dance across the waves. She frowned in puzzlement as she noticed the periodic breaks in the dance, where the light glinted off something in a very non-water-like way. More like bits of metal, she thought. Turning to Raz, she gestured at the glimmers of light. “What are those?”

Raz gave a slight frown that she recognized as his equivalent of another man’s scowl. “Garbage,” he said. “Cheap goods made from necromantic earths, abandoned icons, burned-out demon conduits. All tossed into the sea when people are done with it.”

Cat blinked. “How’s it end up here?” They were, to her inexpert estimation, hundreds of leagues from anywhere.

Raz moved a hand in a circular motion. “Currents and winds pile things up in these seas.” He surveyed the waves. Cat wondered what he could see that she couldn’t. “I’d heard, but I hadn’t realized it has gotten this bad. I haven’t sailed here in a long time.”

“Does that make the sailing harder? The waters and winds trying to keep you here?”

“The _Bounty_ ’s no piece of trash,” Raz said. “But captains do tend to avoid this place. It’s not just the risk of getting becalmed. A sea goddess used to rule these waves, before she went off to die in the God Wars. She wasn’t always well-disposed toward visitors.”

Cat felt something stir from the nearly-full moon above. Yes, this story would resonate with Seril. “What was her name?”

“Ellina, I think.”

Something wasn’t adding up. “She’s been gone for decades, but ships still shun the place.”

“Currents and wind, like I said. And sailors have long memories.”

“Then why are _we_ here?”

Raz paused for a long moment, then gestured down, below the speckled waves. “Sailors aren’t the only ones who tend to avoid this place.”

She took his meaning, and swallowed. “You think they’re still after us.”

They had seen nothing, and said nothing, of the ancient vampires of the ocean since Cat had shielded Raz from their call. She had begun to hope that Raz was wrong, that they wouldn’t be coming.

Raz gave the slight frown again. “Sailors aren’t the only ones with long memories, either… It’s not that I’m afraid. But you’ve got a timetable in Kavekana. I mean to deliver you there on schedule, without distractions.”

She appreciated that he didn’t rehash their argument over her mission. She was pretty sure he still didn’t like it, but when she’d told him her mind was made up, he’d dropped the subject.

Suddenly Raz was facing the other way, his impossible speed still taking her by surprise. “What is…”

Whatever else he had to say was drowned out by the clamor of a vast bulk heaving itself out of the ocean, within a stone’s throw of their bow.

“Fuck!” Cat gasped.

She strained to make out the shape. It seemed darker than it ought, as if it were drinking in the moonlight that should have bathed it. But from the silhouette, Cat thought she saw a head, shoulders, one arm reaching above the water – but at an enormous scale. She struggled to gauge how enormous. It certainly dwarfed the _Bounty_.

Her throat had gone dry. She struggled to keep her tone light.

“Your sea goddess, Raz?”

He gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. “I don’t think so. There’s something…”

The thing threw back its head and _howled_.

The howl shredded the peace of the night, scourged Cat’s nerves and left them raw. She clapped her hands over her ears, but the howl kept reverberating inside them. She wasn’t sure if it was coming from out on the ocean, or from within her head. The _Bounty_ pitched and bucked under her feet as the wake from the thing struck it, and Raz’s night crew staggered and stumbled about the deck.

A flurry of images filled her vision. She thought she made out a drowning sailor, a broken clock, waves breaking over ruined walls. The visions came more and more quickly, going by so fast that she couldn’t make anything out. She shook her head, trying to clear her sight. Her head ached, worse than any hangover she could remember. The howl seemed unending. She could only just hear, beneath it, the screams of the humans below decks.

Something grabbed hold of her arm. She balled her free hand into a fist and drew it back before she realized it had to be Raz. She blinked, trying to see flashes of his face past the visions. She could make out that he was yelling something at her, but his words were inaudible over the din. Her eyes followed the motion of his lips until she realized what he was saying.

“The Suit, Cat, the Suit!”

She clothed herself in the Suit, a gray wave that flowed down from the top of her head to encase her in its protection. The howl went on, but now it was just outside of her, not invading her skull. She took a breath of relief.

 _Thank you_ , she said to Raz. She looked around her on the deck. Even the skeleton-things had slumped to their kneecaps, seemingly overcome. _How are you not affected?_

“Who says I’m not?” he asked grimly. “But I’m not going to lose control to anything in my head. Let’s head for the helm. We need to get the _Bounty_ out of here.”

Cat didn’t respond, her eye and attention drawn to the stream of visions. They still came too fast to make out details, but they didn’t block out her sight or overwhelm her as they nearly had without the Suit. The Suit, noting her interest, began filtering out the noise, looking for meaning, as it had been built to do.

“Cat?”

 _Wait_. The stream of images narrowed to a few: a corpse lying on a table, a blank tag tied to its foot; a soaked business card, ruined and illegible; a marble statue missing its head. As she focused on them, the howl ceased to be a meaningless noise, became a single word repeated over and over. *WHO?*

 _It’s trying to talk to us,_ she realized. She amplified the Suit’s voice and called out to the giant. _I’m Officer Elle. We mean you no harm._

Nothing changed. *WHO?* the thing roared. The screams from below were sounding more strained.

 _I need to get closer._ She stepped toward the rail, unfurled her wings.

“Cat! Don’t…” Raz looked around at his suffering crew, visibly swallowed what he’d been about to say – Cat guessed _don’t do anything stupid_. “Don’t fall into the water. You can’t swim in that thing.”

 _I know_. She stepped up on the rail and lifted herself in the air, heading toward the hulking mass. If the thing could hear her, maybe she could talk it down. Or at least, she could distract it from the _Bounty_.

An arm reached out for her, and she dove to avoid it. Distraction achieved, but the thing still howled. The Suit, monitoring the condition of the crew, signaled her that they were continuing to weaken.

She needed more than a distraction to save them. She needed a miracle.

She looked up at the moon and made each beat of her wings a prayer. _Seril, can you help them?_

And suddenly the moon was more than a moon. The _Bounty_ was soaked in moonlight, seemingly thick as the water the ship floated on.

 _I have wrapped their minds in dreams_ , her goddess said. _Save the one who dreams no longer_.

She still spoke to Cat in her mother’s voice. Cat really wished she would quit that.

The tenor of the howl changed, and the visions shifted. Cat glimpsed a fallen body in the desert, being picked clean by scavengers, and a wall falling to a burst from a Craftwork siege cannon. *NO!*MY PLACE!*

If this thing was a god – or something like one – was Seril’s presence an affront to it, in a way the ship was not? Cat tried for a placating tone.   _We don’t mean any intrusion. She only acts to protect those claimed by her_. Technically, that only covered her and Raz, but this thing seemed unlikely to dwell on fine points of the law.

*MY PLACE!* it cried.

_We will go from this place, as fast as we can, and trouble you no more._

*NO!*WHO?*TELL!*

The visions were increasingly agitated and difficult to make out. The water around the monster churned violently.

 _My name is Catherine Elle_. In the Suit, keeping her voice calm was easy. _I’m an officer of Justice in…_

*NO!*NOT YOU!*

Strong negation, the image of a way blocked by rubble. Of course, it wanted to know about the goddess on the scene, not the mortal.

 _Her name is Seril_. _She is goddess of the moon, protector of Alt Coulumb, mother to the gargoyles…_

*NO!* There was momentary quiet, as if the thing was considering, and then it howled again. *WHO*AM*I*?

Cat had no idea. She turned her eyes to the moon. _Do_ you _know what this is_?

 _Something dead yet living_ , said Seril. _Something old yet new. Something of the sea, yet of the land_.

 _Thanks, that’s very helpful._ Cat wondered sometimes if all gods shared Seril’s aversion to the phrase _I don’t know_.

She glanced back at the ship. Raz had attained the helm and was gripping the wheel with one hand. The other, clutching a spyglass, was energetically beckoning at her.

 _I’ll be right back_ , she told the howling mass. _I’ll find you an answer_.

She had no idea how she was going to do that, but her words did seem to calm it. She soared back to the _Bounty_ and dropped down to stand beside Raz. He had the look of a man who had bitten into an apple only to discover it was rotten.

“It’s made of trash,” he said without preamble.

_What?_

“You can pierce that cloud around it,” Raz said, gesturing again with the spyglass, “if you want to see it badly enough. It’s just a mound of refuse. That arm that grabbed at you, it’s old planks wrapped together with torn bits of cloth. One of its eyes is a bunch of yellow duck toys.” Cat might have laughed at that if she hadn’t been wearing the Suit, but Raz looked appalled. “What is this thing supposed to be? The god of trash?”

That actually started Cat thinking. She mused, _You know, all that trash…_

An image of a chamber pot being emptied out a window. *TRASH?*

Could the trash god, or whatever it was, hear anything she said in the Suit? _Hold on_ , she told it, and dispelled the Suit.

“I was just thinking,” she explained to Raz, “All that trash that’s wound up here… If it was worn or used by people, if it mattered to them at one time, it probably still carried tiny bits of soul, right? All those scraps of soulstuff, accumulating here…” She brought her hands together.

“You think that it could pool together, become something more?” He gave his slight frown. “You’re talking about tiny slivers of soul. How much would it take to form something like that thing?”

“Kos and Seril, I don’t know.” This never came up in police work. “I wish Tara was here. She understands this kind of shit.”

“Might as well wish for Lady K, while you’re at it. She’d set this straight.”

Cat had forgotten that Raz had known Elayne Kevarian a lot longer than she had. “Yeah. Well, it’s just us.”

Raz narrowed his eyes. “It could be more than trash. Maybe it’s blood.”

“You’d be the expert.”

He ignored the sally. “A lot of gods’ blood was spilled in the God Wars. Craftswomen and Craftsmen gathered what they could, but that can’t have been all of it. Rains and rivers would have washed it into the sea, and eventually, it would wind up here…”

“Mix with the mortal soulstuff, and become… something else?” An unpleasant thought occurred to her. “Hell, forget blood. There could be _parts_ of dead gods in there. Dig far enough into that trash pile, we might find the rotting corpse of the old sea-goddess underneath.”

Raz drew in a sharp breath, forgetting in the wake of that image that he had no use for air.

Cat shrugged. “Or maybe that thing’s just a big pile of trash.”

The mammoth silhouette howled, an aching cry that threatened to flay Cat’s nerves. She hurried to don the Suit again. The _Bounty_ trembled in the face of the howl like a man preparing to hurl himself from a roof.

“I don’t think it cared for that idea,” Raz said drily.

Cat focused again on the visions. A woman run over by a cart, a discarded hand of cards, a baby left at the Church of Kos’s door, *CHANCE*BORN?” it wailed. *OF*LEAVINGS?”

Shit, it had heard all of that? Her mind raced. _Lots of people come into this world unintended,_ she said to it. _Humans, demons… why not gods?_

*NEED*PURPOSE!* *NEED*REASON!*

 _We find our own reasons, with time_.

*NO!*NEED*NOW!* Something in its aspect grew more baleful. *I*AM*TRASH?* *RUIN*ALL!*

The water around the _Bounty_ swirled and churned. The thing was definitely getting closer.

Cat prayed. _Seril, can you stop it?_

 _It is strong here, in its place_. _And_ _I am loathe to fight another wounded child of the Wars._

Cat sympathized with that, she really did, but… _I think you have a choice between that and finding a new priestess_.

 _Perhaps confrontation can still be avoided. I will aid your escape_. Moonlight filled the _Bounty_ ’s sails, and it sprang across the waves.

Raz had his spyglass out. “Cat! It’s still gaining on us.”

*YOU*MINE!* *ALL*FORGET*YOU!*

 _I would never forget you_ , Seril protested indignantly.

 _Being_ forgotten _isn’t what I’m really worried about here…_

Wait. _Forgotten_.

She thought through the visions the god's voice had carried. The ruined clock, the crumbling wall – sure, those could be called trash. But the drowned sailor, the unclaimed corpse, the abandoned child – they were something else.

 _You’re_ not _the god of trash_. It ignored her, caught up in its pursuit. _Time to do something stupid_ , she thought, and dismissed the Suit.

The god’s cries battered her mind and senses, but she held herself together long enough to scream her message, “You’re not the god of trash! You’re the god of forgotten things!”

The moon overhead sang her approval.

A shudder went through the god, and it stopped. The sea was eerily quiet. When it spoke again, she found she no longer needed the Suit to understand it.

“FORGOTTEN THINGS? IS THAT ANY BETTER?”

“Yes!” Cat yelled, and hoped she could come up with some good reasons. She was never sure, afterward, whether the next words came from her or Seril. “The lost, the abandoned, the forgotten, the hopeless: they will turn to you in their desperation, and you will give them strength. And those things that are left to come to ruin, you will gather them to you, and remember what the world has forgotten.”

The thing considered. “YES,” it said at last.

The field of shadow around it was clearing. Had it been tied to the god’s uncertainly about its own nature? Or had that nature been undetermined, until her words settled it? Shit, that was a question to make her head hurt. Let Tara worry about that stuff.

As the moonlight fully illuminated the god, Cat clearly saw the flotsam and scraps that Raz had described. But mixed among them, other things glimmered and glinted in the light – hints of treasures and secrets old and new, part of its being just as much as the trash.

“AND YOU, CATHERINE ELLE? ARE YOU PART OF MY DOMAIN?”

It struck her all that, a few years ago, the answer would have been yes. She had been lost – at least, she had lost her way. Not quite forgotten, but would it have taken long for everyone to forget her?

But now? Now she had a goddess who loved her, even if that scared the piss out of her sometimes. And she had Raz, and Abelard, and Tara… and a mission to carry out. Ms. Batan would _definitely_ take notice if she failed to arrive.

“No,” she said, and felt an unexpected smile stretch across her face.

“THEN BEGONE FROM HERE!” it said, and reached out toward the _Bounty_. It was much too far away to reach the ship – but its arm shifted and elongated with impossible speed, and before Cat could react the god had picked up the _Bounty_ and hurled it across the waves.

The _Bounty_ skipped from wave to wave like a child’s stone. Cat had never been seasick, but now she felt like her stomach was trying to turn itself inside out. She gritted her teeth, wrapped her hands around the rail, and held on tight. The ship flew along, timbers moaning in protest each time it hit the waves below. Cat lost count of how many times that happened before the ship finally stopped careening across the ocean.

Raz surveyed his crew, who were scattered across the deck. “Is everyone all right?" He looked back along their path. “Anyone overboard?”

The crew answered in a chorus of groans, but it seemed that no one was missing or hurt really bad. Another miracle, Cat thought, and wasn’t sure what goddess or god she should thank for this one.

Raz looked up at the stars. “We’ve come a long ways. Even if we need to make repairs, that thing shaved three, four days off our trip.”

“Too bad there’s no way to rush my partner’s arrival,” Cat said.

Raz looked back at her with admiration and, she was pretty sure, lust. “You were amazing back there, Cat. I don’t know how you found the words to talk that thing around, but… I am in your debt. Once again.”

Cat waved her hand. “All debts canceled.” She thought a moment. “Though, if you really want to thank me properly…”

Raz showed a bit of fang, and she shivered.

“Captain!” A crewman had stuck his head through a hatch leading below decks. “We’re taking on water!”

Raz reluctantly turned from her. “Later,” he said softly, and went to see to his ship and crew.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! You mentioned that you enjoyed how the Craft novels tend to take an unexpected turn, and I enjoy how they riff on real-world events or issues, so I tried to incorporate both.


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